Trump’s Angry New Tirade Over Tariff Ruling Accidentally Says Too Much

This is what the court ruled illegal (though the tariffs can proceed for now). It found that the relevant statute—the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, or IEEPA—doesn’t afford Trump this authority at all. The statute doesn’t mention “tariffs” as a remedy for emergencies, and it requires that emergencies pose an “extraordinary and unusual threat,” which trade deficits simply do not.

But that aside, in saying all this, Trump is openly declaring that he should have the power to circumvent Congress in levying these tariffs to address emergencies. Yet as Trump himself demonstrates here, in claiming this authority, he’s invoking an emergency that is not real. Trillions of dollars are not being “lost” by our country due to trade deficits, as his rant proclaims. That is not how trade deficits work, and they certainly do not constitute “emergencies.” As Trump’s tirade plainly shows, he made up the “emergency” to grant himself extraordinarily sweeping authorities.

All this demonstrates exactly why we want Trump to subject himself to Congress’s directives in the first place. The key point to understand here is that Congress did delegate the president some powers over trade, but it circumscribed those powers. The IEEPA gave the president some authorities to act on economic emergencies. But Trump acted outside those authorities. As the ruling puts it, the statute “only” allows Trump to “deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat” but “not” for “any other purpose,” and Trump’s tariffs “do not meet that condition.” They do not address an “unusual and extraordinary threat” at all.